Progress amid holiday listlessness
over 4 years ago
– Tue, Dec 10, 2019 at 11:46:28 PM
There's nothing quite like the Holidays to throw off one's reckoning of calendar time. It's a time of year when you have the license — in some ways, the obligation as well — to do all sorts of stuff for which you wouldn't make allowance the rest of the year. Plus, I got sick Thanksgiving week and spent most of it huddled up with my upper respiratory infection. So I woke up this morning and realized quite suddenly that December is almost 1/3 through.
Hence this update. There is real news: Tome of the Utility Drawer should be ready for the printer this weekend. It turned out about twice as long as I'd expected — about 10,500 words — and much of it is Kickstarter-exclusive content. I cut over 20% for the Standard Edition, and when that eventually goes up on DriveThru RPG, I will sell it for no less than what you guys paid.
This means that even though we're officially behind schedule, we're close to wrapping things up and distributing the rewards. So I'm going to finally close the Backerkit store for this campaign on Friday and lock everyone's orders and what's in place at that time will determine how many copies we order from the printer.
I always feel guilty about being late with a campaign. But OTOH, as a backer, I'm waiting on rewards from three campaigns, all of which are late to varying degrees. All of them are run by reputable game publishers, so I feel like I'm in good company. At least we don't have any components coming from halfway around the world on a cargo ship; we just have to wait for the UPS man.
A Journey of Ten Thousand Miles
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 04:04:25 PM
That is, of course, a reference to the old Chinese proverb that even a journey as long as 10,000 miles starts with a single step. What that leaves out, of course, is that after that first step, you have to take a lot more steps before you log the full 10,000 miles. But every step represents progress, and if I've learned anything over the course of a long and not entirely error-free life, it's to take things as they come as much as one can.
Some of you may have noticed that I extended the lock-down date for Backerkit by another 10 days. This means little to those of you who have already submitted your surveys and are sure you won't change anything. But it does signify that we're not ready to go to print with everything yet. However, we are getting closer: The test proofs for Oasis of the Elementals came back today, and Path to the Mizar Oasis is through layout and ready for its test print.
This leaves Tome of the Utility Drawer as the main sticking point for this campaign's rewards. At the moment, it's 90% written and it will go into layout next week. At the moment, I'm not sure how much time we'll have to leave for layout — the template that has really speeded up the process of laying out the modules doesn't really work here — but we're on target for being just a little bit late. Just a bit.
Where We Are on the Road to Mizar
over 4 years ago
– Mon, Nov 04, 2019 at 05:41:51 PM
We're coming on the deadline that we had originally set for filling out the Backerkit surveys and collecting pre-orders. 90% of you have completed and submitted yours and are good to go. For the remaining dozen or so, guess what? We're going to give you a little longer to decide what you want to do. Let's say, another week, maybe more.
At the moment, Oasis of the Elementals is almost through layout. Path to the Mizar Oasis is ready for layout. I'm still working on Tome of the Utility Drawer, but it's about 80% written. So although we're making progress, it's not going as quickly as planned and we're not ready to go to press yet. So we can keep the pre-order store open a while longer.
Why are we behind schedule? There's multiple reasons, but the probably the most important one is that everything is running long this production cycle. Both Oasis of the Elementals and Path to the Mizar Oasis topped out at over 15,000 words. For the latter, I needed to work up some NPC templates because there are no "official" generic NPCs for Pathfinder 2E yet. It looks like Tome of the Utility Drawer will come in at about 10,000 words. So what I had originally envisioned as a quick way to repackage some existing material for a different audience will end up almost as long as a typical Places by the Way/Found by the Way module. You folks who opted in for the PDF will get a bargain for a buck, I tell you!
The good news is that getting up to speed on Pathfinder 2E has not been a huge chore up to now. There are the quirks and the oddities and the changes in format to get used to, but so far nothing that makes my brain hurt in the manner of Monty Python's Flying Circus' Mr. Gumby characters. This has been something of a relief, as it seems to be easier to make my brain hurt as I get older. That being said, it looks like the 1E-2E conversion notes for Found by the Way 1-7 may take more work than I'd anticipated, and I may actually publish them as seven separate PDFs rather than a compendium. I think they'll be easier for you to use that way — maybe? But that won't change the price point, still gratis.
Where there's smoke, there's... what?
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Oct 05, 2019 at 05:19:25 PM
Just a quick note to let you know that the smoke test has gone well enough so that I'm going to send out the pledge manager survey to everyone else as soon as I sign off here. Everything seems to be working.
Remember, the pledge manager survey replaces Kickstarter's backer survey for collecting reward choice and shipping info. So if you need to choose between D&D and Pathfinder for your reward, and you ordered a physical reward, be sure to fill everything out. No guessing or blind dart-throwing when it comes to something like this.
We'll won't lock anybody's orders until the end of the month, possibly later. We'll let things go until the very moment we place our order with the printer.
Did I mention that I added an item in the Backerkit store for the conversion notes for running Found by the Way 1-7 with Pathfinder 2E? No point in requiring you to go elsewhere to download them, nor did I want to assume that everyone will want them, even though they're free of charge.
Before I go, I also wanted to note that we've decided to raise the MSRP on the softcover Standard Editions from $5.99 to $7.99 and we're going to do it sometime this fall. This doesn't directly affect you as Kickstarter backers because we won't be raising the pledge level for Limited Edition print copies, and we'll continue to offer Standard Edition print copies through Backerkit at $6. So you'll actually be getting a discount on the Standard Edition softcover going forward. These modules are running longer than I'd originally intended and the cost of printing is a concern. After running the numbers, we realized that after middlemen like Amazon and the other online sellers where you can find the softcover Standard Edition take their cut, we're left with very little. Fortunately, electrons are still cheap so the PDF price will not be affected.
That's all for now, but I'll keep you updated as the work progresses. Thanks again!
Pledge manager available in 3... 2...
over 4 years ago
– Fri, Oct 04, 2019 at 12:09:22 AM
I hope this finds everyone having a good week. It looks like Kickstarter has successfully collected everyone's pledges, and as is their habit they'll sit on the money for another week and fix me with a cold stare if I even think about wanting to have it transferred earlier than that. Backerkit is currently reviewing the pledge manager form that I submitted, which means that a small number of you — probably about 7 — will be getting the survey by the end of the week as part of the smoke test. Which means everyone else should be getting their survey by Monday. Of course, that's assuming that everything goes according to plan; those of you remember our last campaign know that this is something of a leap of faith. But I feel more comfortable with how Backerkit works now, so I hope everything goes more smoothly this time.
All of the rewards for this campaign except for the Catch-up Specials will be available as add-ons. In addition, we'll offer print copies of Tome of the Utility Drawer, PDFs of our previous modules (Kickstarter Limited Edition), and print copies of our previous modules (Standard Edition). Except for overrun copies, the Kickstarter Limited Editions are no longer available in paper form; we use one slot for each module with our on-demand printer to conserve ISBN numbers, so after the initial Kickstarter reward print run, we replace the file with the Standard Edition file (i.e., the version that goes on sale to the mere mortals who buy their print copies elsewhere).
Meanwhile, the work continues. Oasis of the Elementals is still in layout, and I hope to get a status update tomorrow. I'm still working on Path to the Mizar Oasis, and on the maps. Did I mention that there will be more maps than usual — a few tactical maps as well as a village map? Well, there will be more maps than usual.
